This recipe for Kalamata Olive Bread is one of my favorites – and as a bread fiend, that’s saying something! Over the holiday weekend I was craving it something awful, so Shane was nice enough to make me a loaf in the midst of our poster-hanging frenzy. (Yeah, we’ve only lived here three years, and already we’re getting around to decorating. WE MOVE FAST, YO!) Then I started craving pizza (like I ever stop!), so I decided to combine my two loves to make Kalamata Olive Bread Pizza. It did not disappoint! The tang of the bread complements the mozzarella Daiya and red sauce nicely, and it’s even better when toasted to a lovely brown crisp. I see many more slices in my future.

Of course, you can sub in your own favorite bread recipe; I’ve made quickie toaster pizzas with everything from homemade loafs to french bread to plain old sliced white bread. It’s hard to go wrong when vegan pizza is involved!

The pizza toppings of your choice. I used red sauce, mozzarella Daiya cheese and black olives.

Directions

1. Set up your bread machine.

2. Place ingredients into the bread pan in the following order: water, olive oil, olives, bread flour, sugar and salt.

3. With your finger, make a small indentation on one side of the flour. Add yeast to the indentation, making sure it does not come into contact with the liquid ingredients.

4. Insert the bread pan into your machine. Run a cycle for a 1.5 pound loaf of French Bread (or similar, depending on your machine). For us, this cycle lasted nearly four hours, so plan accordingly!

5. Once done, remove the loaf from the pan and allow to cool on the counter. Enjoy a warm slice or two while you wait!

6. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (optional).

7. Slice the loaf either length or width-wise, taking off only as many slices as you need. A single thick slice makes for a decent meal, but a hungry vegan can easily down two in one sitting! One loaf should be enough to serve three to five people (or one or two with plenty of leftover bread for snacking!).

8. Garnish with the pizza toppings of your choice – sauce, nondairy cheese, vegan meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc. – and cook at 425 degrees for 20 minutes or until the bread is toasted and the cheese is melty. For a single slice, save some energy by using a toaster oven!

Last Monday was my birthday (happy birthday me!), and Shane wanted to make me something special for dinner. Rather than opt for a big, elaborate meal followed by a sweet, sugary dessert – the thermometer topped 90 degrees that day! hottest birthday ever! – my request was simple: a mac & cheese pizza. I’d been fantasizing about the dish since our Tater Tot and Garbage Plate pizzas back in March. (The thought process going something like this: What other junk food dinners can we serve on a pizza, hmmmm?)

A little googling revealed infinite variations on the mac & cheese pizza theme. None of them vegan, of course, but that’s okay; veganizing mac & cheese is easy peasy now that there are so many vegan cheeses on the market. One version, which I’d still like to try sometime, involves using the mac & cheese as a base, and then layering pizza sauce and toppings on top, casserole style. Yummy, if not very pizza-like. (But throw a crust on bottom and problem solved!)

Cornmeal or cooking spray with which to coat the pizza stone or pizza pan
Olive oil or cooking spray to lightly coat the dough
Several strips of vegan bacon (optional; we used Lightlife Smart Bacon)

Directions

Prepare the dough!

1. Stir the water, sugar and yeast together until dissolved. Add the olive oil and salt, as well as any extra spices or seasonings. Stir in the flour until blended. Form the dough into a small ball and let rest in large bowl, covered loosely with a towel, anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.

Make the cheese sauce!

2. Once the dough is done rising and you’re ready to assemble the pizza, get to work on the cheese sauce. In a medium-sized saucepan, bring the soy milk to a boil.

3. Reduce the heat to medium and mix in the margarine, stirring until melted.

4. Add the cheese shreds, stirring gently until they combine with the liquid to form a creamy cheese sauce. The soupier the better, as the oven baking will thicken it up quite a bit.

Optional: season to taste with salt, pepper, onion or garlic.

5. Reduce the heat to low, stirring every few minutes.

6. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Make the pasta!

7. In a deep skillet or wide, shallow sauce pan, cook the pasta according to the directions provided on the package. Stop when about 90% done and drain, leaving a little hot water with the pasta. (This will mostly cook down as you continue to heat the pasta.)

Combine the two to make mac and cheese!

8. Mix the cheese sauce into pasta, stirring well. On medium low heat, let the pasta continue to cook until it’s the desired consistency. Stir constantly during this last step so that none of the pasta or cheese sticks to the pan.

9. As the pasta is cooking, spread a dusting of cornmeal onto your pizza stone (or lightly coat your pizza pan with cooking spray). Using fingers dipped in olive oil (optional), pat the dough onto the stone, spreading it out evenly. Lightly dust a bit of olive oil on top of the dough, or spray it with a bit of cooking spray.

10. Next, sprinkle a little extra Daiya on the crust to taste. Then add the mac & cheese, spreading it out evenly on the pizza pie. If it’s a bit on the soupy side, allow it to cool for a few minutes before adding it to the pizza; this will give it time to solidify, but not too much! Top with vegan bacon if desired. (Alternately, you can add the bacon first; this will keep it soft and moist vs. crispy and crunchy.)

11. Bake at 425 degrees, for between 15 and 20 minutes for a single pizza, or 30 minutes for two pizzas.

12. Serve warm, perhaps with a side of macaroni and cheese for dipping sauce?

Kidding!

Okay not really. This is my serious face. You do not kid about mac & cheese.

So yeah, I’ve been kind of lax in posting these link roundups lately. By which I mean I skipped two weeks straight ’cause I had other stuff to do. (Like make pizza, duh!) In my defense, it’s Saturday! You can hardly blame a girl. I promise to be better, or at least try. And for breaking vegan and/or pizza-related news, you can always follow us on twitter @theppp! (Do it!)

Contests and giveaways! So Delicious is still going strong with its 100 Days of Change Giveaway. Today’s prize? A sterling silver Kate Spade picture frame – perfect for showing off that kickass pie you made last week. Enter to win on their FB page. Elsewhere on the interwebs – and in honor of World Fair Trade Day (that’s today!) – Luna & Larry’s is giving away one Coconut Bliss gift basket.

This week at Animal Haven: Baxter’s Boutique is open for business; read about young volunteer Beth Gasser, who donated a gift basket to the shelter as part of her Bat Mitzvah celebration; and meet (read: adopt!) Shilo and Achilles!

Get high – on life, on carbs, whatever – and watch this video. It’s weird and scary and I die a little inside every time I see it, and yet I cannot turn away.

Here’s a fun, fast meal idea for those nights when you’re craving a pizza nom, but don’t have the time or energy to make one from scratch. PITA PIZZAS! They’re like Pizza Hut’s Personal Pan Pizzas, but way healthier (or less unhealthy, depending on your choice of toppings), relatively inexpensive, and totally vegan. Plus, from assembly to bake time they take about as much time to make as delivery. SCORE!

Personal Pita Pizzas

Ingredients

Cooking spray (optional)

A piece of pita bread (one per pizza). We stock up on packages of freshly baked pita bread from the Jerusalem Cafe (their hummus? AWESOME!), freezing the stuff that we don’t plan on using immediately. It keeps rather well – even when kept in deep freeze for months on end – and you can defrost it easily before use: just pop in the microwave for 30 to 45 seconds before adding your toppings and baking.

Contests & giveaways! So Delicious is about halfway through its 100 Days of Change Giveaway; simply like its Facebook page and check back daily for new contests and prizes! Elsewhere on the interwebs, The Hungry Vegan has a prize pack consisting of five coupons for free So Delicious ice cream and a pair of hand-crafted ceramic bowls from Sorella Luna in Portland, Oregon (gorgeous!). In celebration of Earth Day, Cook. Vegan. Lover. has a prize pack of If You Care items up for grabs. Last but not least, Eden Cafe is giving away a selection of green “adult” toys to three lucky winners through tomorrow.

MeatGate Update: Earlier this week, VegNewsapologized (for real this time!) for using non-vegan and stock photos in its magazine and on its website, and announced that it will no longer do so in the future! Additionally, it plans on establishing its own vegan stock photo website – which, along with the one created by the Food for Lovers Vegan Queso people, makes two vegan stock photo websites! Get your cameras ready and show us your mitts, vegan photogs! Also, many thanks to QuarryGirl.com for breaking the story – had it not, we’d still be drooling over photoshopped photos of animal parts for dog knows how long!

With your assistance, Spay & Neuter Kansas City spayed and neutered 123 dogs and cats and provided over $1,490 in spay neuter subsidy assistance this week. Along with Wayside Waifs and Halfway Home Pet Adoptions, SNKC also held a memorial service for the two pit bull puppies who were abused, killed and then disposed of in a dumpster in Kansas City on Monday. At the time of this writing, SNKC has raised $7,500 in pledges to put towards a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

I’ve had calzones on the brain ever since the Parks and Recreation episode “Ron & Tammy: Part Two” aired in February. In a last-ditch effort to make the Harvest Fest happen, the Parks & Rec crew resorted to bribery a la a pizza party in order to convince the police department to provide free security for the event. Ben suggested calzones, thus leading to a running gag about calzones being disgusting and pointless (the worst food ever invented!), much to his chagrin. (Quoth the Police Chief: “What the hell is wrong with this guy?”)

The plot line left me totally baffled, cause calzones are the shiz! Pizza, made portable! Doubled down for extra-easy shotgunning action!